My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm

by Manny Howard

  In the examining room Lisa is transformed. She is the picture of maternal angst. She can barely manage a smile and stares silently at Heath’s right knee. When Heath hops off the examining table in her bare feet and underpants, Lisa shoots me a look, shocked that I would allow such a dangerous maneuver to occur here, in a doctor’s office. Heath walks across the room and cranes her neck to inspect a rubber model of an elbow positioned on an aqua-turquoise Formica countertop. “Here, check out the knee, Heath,” I say, picking up a rubber knee replica and waggling it at her. “It’s a knee. That’s why we’re here, right?”

  Heath smiles. “Dadda,” she scolds playfully, and laughs as she reaches for the statue. The surgeon swings into the examining room just as Heath palms the rubber model. He is clearly a pro, wearing a white lab coat over a natty charcoal pin-striped suit, his red tie in a full Windsor knot. He is warm and engaged, at pains to put Heath at ease and to involve her in the examination. The doctor asks Heath and then the two of us what the nature of the complaint is. Heath says her knee hurts. Lisa describes that pain as both dull and sharp, explains just how much it varies, and when and where Heath is and what she’s doing (pretty much anything) when she feels it.

  The surgeon smiles, trying to absorb Lisa’s rapid-fire diagnosis. When she stops momentarily for a breath, the surgeon cuts in, “Let’s just have a look, shall we, Heath?”

  “Sure,” says Heath, putting down the rubber knee that she has been working over intently next to her on the examining table. “It’s this one,” says Heath, touching her right knee, “not this one,” touching the other. The surgeon and I smile. Lisa tries her best. The surgeon extends the leg, applies pressure to the joint in a dozen places, repositioning it a half dozen times.

  The surgeon arranges an X-ray, examines the results, and all of a sudden he’s telling us that the sooner we can schedule Heath’s surgery the better. He says it is impossible to know for certain, but best to prepare for a lengthy recovery. Heath may well be in a wheelchair for six weeks, he says; after that, we will all just have to see. Lisa and I dare not look at each other.

  “Shit,” I say, when he asks if we have any questions. Lisa is valiantly trying not to weep. The surgeon smiles, removes a digital recorder from his lab coat, and explodes into a clinical digestion of Heath’s examination and diagnosis for his records: “… have recommended surgery and advised parents”—deep breath while he consults Heath’s chart—“Lisa and Manny Howard, that surgery should not be delayed unnecessarily.” He turns off the device and smiles broadly, and we all leave the examining room together. The surgeon suggests, gesturing around the corner, that we speak to his assistant about scheduling surgery.

  First Lisa calls her own assistant, Peter, and cancels all of her remaining afternoon meetings. On the way home we stop at Paul’s Place, a burger counter on Second Avenue at Saint Mark’s Place, and buy three cheeseburgers, three bags of french fries, and three chocolate shakes.

  Heath’s surgery is by no means life-threatening, but her flawed meniscus, the pad of cartilage in the knee that buffers the femur and tibia, has always made climbing stairs, running, jumping, and, occasionally, just walking awkward for her. Now she will spend the summer in a wheelchair, sitting still in the swelter just as Bevan Jake is mastering his scooter.

  Before lunch the next day I purchase all the lumber and fasteners necessary for the wheelchair ramp that will link our front porch to the sidewalk. By evening the lumber has been notched and secured to the front steps and stretches eighteen feet along a gentle slope well onto the sidewalk. All that remains is to install the plywood deck and build the railing. All work on The Farm ceases for the day.

  My hope is that the instantaneous construction of a wheelchair ramp will provide comfort to Lisa when she returns from work. But when Lisa does emerge from Mr. Hemmings’s Town Car at the end of the workday commute, the sight of the enormous ramp hanging off the front of the house like some giant wooden tongue does not have the effect I intended. At first, because the deck and the railing have not yet been built, Lisa does not understand what she is looking at.

  When I introduce it as Heath’s wheelchair ramp, her eyes leave mine, shifting to the wooden appendage on the front of our house. She smiles weakly, her gaze resting where the foot of the raw lumber extends beyond our property line and well onto the public sidewalk. Her mind working; what element does she object to most? “We haven’t even scheduled the surgery yet, Manny.”

  “Thought it best to be set up,” I explain, trying for cheerful ingenuity with a hint of ironic self-knowledge. “The doctor did advise us to avoid unnecessary delay.”

  “What do we tell the neighbors?” Lisa has moved on.

  “That Heath is having knee surgery?”

  “I don’t want them knowing that!”

  “Knowing what?”

  “Knee surgery.”

  “They’re gonna figure it out when they see the wheelchair.”

  “In July!”

  “Like Heath’s not gonna tell the world before July?”

  “It’s her news to tell.” Lisa’s eyes are dead, like a shark’s.

  “It’s not like our little girl has an STD, it’s knee surgery!”

  “It is a congenital defect.”

  “Better than a motorcycle accident.”

  “Just forget it.” Lisa walks along the ramp’s eighteen feet, up the stairs, regarding it like some foul growth. “Why do you have to always be so public about our life?” She closes the half-painted front door firmly, locking it behind her.

  “What are you building now?” asks our neighbor Peter enthusiastically, coming up behind me with his dog, Gumbo, on a leash.

  “A wheelchair ramp,” I reply, more than half-dreading that Lisa can hear the conversation from inside.

  “Oh, yeah?” says Peter, concerned, looking at me for the answer to the unspoken question Who?

  “Heath has to have knee surgery. She has a discoid meniscus. It’s hereditary. Not all that serious, but, the surgeon says, six weeks in the chair. Maybe. Probably.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then crutches. All summer, really.”

  “Sucks. Poor Heath. When’s the surgery?”

  “It’s not scheduled. A month, maybe.”

  “Already built the ramp, though?”

  “I just thought …”

  “Sure.”

  “Work on The Farm is only going to get crazier,” I explain. “A month from now who knows what will be happening back there.”

  “Sure,” says Peter. “Hey, your rabbits ‘do it’ yet?”

  “No. Driving me crazy. The doe won’t have anything to do with that great big, stupid, sand-colored buck.”

  “They call rabbits same as deer? Does and bucks, huh?”

  “Yep. Same as deer.” I sit down on a beam halfway up the ramp, rubbing Gumbo’s big head.

  “Still no babies, though. Do they call baby rabbits fawns?”

  “Nope. Kits.”

  “Why kits?”

  “Fuck knows.”

  “Hah. Right.”

  “Hey, what’re you building now?” calls Walter from across the street, crossing toward Peter and me and the wheelchair ramp with his dog, Yassie. I wince. Lisa must certainly have heard Walter’s call.

  “A wheelchair ramp,” announces Peter.

  “Oh, yeah?” says Walter enthusiastically. “I thought maybe you were turning the whole house into an ark or something! You know, all the animals up two by two!” he singsongs, walking up the beam parallel to the one I am sitting on like a tightrope walker, arms spread for effect. “Who needs a wheelchair?” he bellows.

  “At this rate I’m going to,” I reply in a stage whisper.

  “What?” Walter barks, hopping backward off the beam, and I admire how little flex there is in my ramp.

  “Nothing. Just kidding. Heath is having knee surgery.”

  “When?” asks Walter, looking around as if he expects an ambulance to be driving down the block. />
  “It’s not even scheduled yet,” says Peter. Walter laughs.

  “Why is that funny?” I say more defensively than I intend.

  “You are building an ark. The surgery thing is a cover story,” says Walter, rubbing his chin theatrically. Now Peter pops out a half laugh. This ramp thing is getting tired, quick. Examining my joinery, I wonder if there’s an efficient way to disassemble it and store it on top of the garage until Heath needs it.

  “Is it legal to run the ramp onto the sidewalk?” Lisa asks, trying but failing to disguise her fury from Peter and Walter. She has returned from inside, where she stripped out of her glamorous business kit into jeans and a T-shirt. Lisa steps out onto the porch.

  She stands above us, sipping a rum cocktail. She has not made a drink for me.

  “Hi, Lisa,” Peter and Walter say in cheerful unison.

  “Hi, guys,” she sings back.

  “No, it’s probably not legal,” I say.

  “What are you going to do about that?” Lisa asks with no song in her voice.

  “Nothing, probably.”

  “What if somebody trips over it and sues us?” she asks, as Walter and Peter nod hurried good-byes and continue walking their dogs down the street.

  “It’s going to have a rail,” I explain. “It’ll be pretty hard to trip over. Is there more rum?”

  “Inside,” she says, without gesture. “So all anybody has to do to make a million bucks from us is trip over this giant, silly ramp. Why does it have to be so big? So long?”

  “If it’s any shorter, it’ll be too steep, like a ski jump.”

  “Why did you build it today?” she repeats, as if she needs to be reminded.

  “I thought it would cheer you up. And, anyhow, in July, by the time Heath has surgery, The Farm is going to be crazy.”

  “The farm? Our daughter is having surgery and all you can think about is the farm? Your daughter is going to be in a wheelchair and you are going to be working on the farm?”

  “The ramp?” I sweep an arm over the lumber. “The ramp is all about Heath and your peace of mind.” After a considerable pause, sure I have made my point, I add, “I am just planning ahead.”

  “The farm?” Lisa is looking left and right, anywhere for a witness to what she is sure can only be madness. “Are you even planning on attending the surgery, or will you be too busy on the farm?”

  “Oh, please.”

  The kids come running up the street ahead of Debbie, the babysitter who has taken care of the kids since they were born. They’re excited to see us and delighted by the ramp. “What’s this for, Dadda?” asks Bevan Jake, swinging underneath it, promptly losing his grip and falling flat on his back with a wind-expelling thud.

  “See?” implores Lisa, alerting me to the immediate danger my ramp poses to good and innocent people everywhere.

  “What?” I insist. “You okay, Jakey?” I ask, reaching for his outstretched hand.

  “What is it?” asks Bevan Jake, unfazed by the fall.

  “It’s a wheelchair ramp,” I say.

  “It’s my wheelchair ramp,” insists Heath.

  “No, it’s mine!” cries Bevan Jake.

  “See?” Lisa repeats, identifying the discord it promotes.

  “What?” I repeat.

  “Is the surgery scheduled already?” asks Debbie, ready to be impressed if it is.

  “No,” I reply, “just wanted to be prepared, is all.”

  “He’s nuts, Debbie. Right?” asks Lisa.

  Debbie laughs. “He’s busy these days, dat’s true,” she says, regarding the ramp’s skeleton. “C’mon, kidsies. Inside for your bath. Jake! You come off dat! You’ll fall again, y’hear?”

  Lisa follows Debbie and the children into the house, again locking the door behind her.

  THE MAN WHO

  WOULD BE KING

  I never intended The Farm as a family project. If I gave it any thought at all, I suppose, when all this started, I hoped that Lisa and Heath and Bevan Jake might enjoy occasional visits to the back of their home, in part because we never really used the backyard before the project started, and because I’m not good at sharing my work with my family. I did all I could to shield Lisa from the realities on the ground in Afghanistan while I prepared for my trip in 2005. Lisa had resolutely refused to interfere with my planned change in career from magazine writing to documentary work. That worked for me.

  Lisa came to New York after college because, until she discovered what starting salaries were in editorial jobs, she wanted to write. She chooses to understand my inability to do anything else not as the failure of imagination and instinct that it is, but as a passion. She insists that “my unusual pursuits” and my “sense of adventure” are causal to our relationship. Before The Farm, Lisa frequently reminded me that I was responsible for providing the adventure in our life together. When I announced that I was done with magazine writing and fully committed to the craft of documentary filmmaking, starting with the one about the war in Afghanistan, what could she do but support my decision? After all, was there any point in resisting it? This was the most excited she’d seen me about work in months, possibly years.

  She never tired of hearing about the project in Afghanistan or the travails of the entire haphazard crew of first-time filmmakers I threw in with, but her support never required any information. A peculiarity of her set of coping skills is that she never does sweat the details, never is overly curious or concerned about the details of the project as it evolves. She was not overly curious about the sorry state of affairs on the ground in Afghanistan and appeared to disassociate all the research I was doing in the office from the possibility that I would, contrary to our original understanding, one day get on a plane and fly to Kabul.

  When that day came, I was determined to shield her from any of the details and, at the same time, was doing a pretty stand-up job of ignoring their implications for my own safety. As the production crew prepared for their second trip, I was asked to consider coming along and agreed to go reflexively, and I derived great pleasure in researching the online purchase of body armor and other protective war-zone gear. I was particularly fixated on purchasing the right handheld GPS device.

  I did not have any anticipatory anxiety about my first trip to a war zone, even after I asked Josh, who, in addition to being my friend, is a New York City firefighter, to brief the crew on trauma first aid, and the balance of his presentation was that we could do little but stuff shrapnel wounds with maxi pads and bullet wounds with tampons and try not to do additional damage if we absolutely had to move the injured. The day before my departure, however, that blasé front Lisa and I had kept up collapsed in a heap. Mine did anyway. An hour into what had been billed as a regular Sunday winter walk along the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the implications of the trip—now thirty-six nonrefundable-airline-ticket hours later—introduced themselves as a chorus of woe. I became convinced that I was leaving my children fatherless. Bevan Jake screeched in my tightening grip. “Sorry, Jake,” I said. “Daddy would never hurt you on purpose. You know that, right?”

  Bevan Jake looked at me, smiled, and gestured to the statue, a globe wrought from bronze rings, that he wanted to continue climbing. He was not yet two years old.

  Lisa was quiet for most of the walk, busying herself, taking pictures of me and the kids horsing around on the bronze statue. I didn’t discuss my ballooning fear of imminent death. Apparently, I recovered my lovable zest for adventure. The morning after the documentary crew arrived in Kabul, I sent her this e-mail:

  Dear Lisa,

  First night in Kabul: It’s 11:30 here and I am sitting in a brightly lit living room in the main house, tucked safe behind the 11-foot concrete walls of the American arms dealer’s compound where the crew is staying. The room has white stucco walls, lace curtains and the kind of furniture available for lease at chain stores in inner cities all over America. I’ve been typing away at production notes (jetlag) for hours and was just interrupted by t
wo drunken female GIs who apparently, so they say, just whored themselves for $200 each to my host (a private contractor—quarter master function—for the Afghan Army) and his Afghan driver/buddy. They didn’t want to talk about that, though. They wanted to talk about how sad a place Afghanistan is. “You know what I once saw?” asked the taller of the two. “I once saw a car bomb. That’s sad, right? This place is sad.”

  I agreed with her. Sad. “Sad,” I said.

  Second Day in Kabul: In addition to a tour of all the Chinese whorehouses in town, Jay, our host, took me on a tour of all the westerners-only shopping markets. Walled compounds holding supermarkets where one’s fellow shoppers are men sporting full-body armor machine guns and insignia from every western country under the sun—well, hardly. It’s funny to see a gun-toting fellah in fatigues scanning the side of a bran flakes box for nutritional info or trying to decide between chocolate chip ice cream and orange sherbet. We were in line behind three Finnish soldiers who had loaded their cart with all the Beefeater gin on the shelf—another big part of the dueling cultures in this dry Muslim country.